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                        <title>The Express Tribune</title>
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			<title>Contamination of intellect and medicines</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/446325/contamination-of-intellect-and-medicines</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/446325/contamination-of-intellect-and-medicines#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Wed, 03 Oct 12 16:57:27 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[Muhammad Hamid Zaman]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
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			<description>
				<![CDATA[Insist on a little bit of quality control and we might be able to save ourselves and our intellect from contamination.]]>
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				<![CDATA[A collective short memory is a mixed blessing. We continue to provide ourselves with news that should make stories for the ages but a short memory, fortunately, allows us to dust off any shock or frustration and we move on to the next day. But every now and then, it is worthwhile to go back, take stock and ask ourselves did we learn anything, anything at all? Are we better off today after the incident?

So today, I want to go back in the not-so-distant past and analyse two, apparently, unrelated incidents and the aftermath of those.

The first incident happened about nine months ago. A ‘mysterious disease’ started taking the lives of innocent people in Lahore. Nine months later, we still do not have any clear answers, no policy outcome and certainly no clear strategy to ensure that this does not happen again. While it is generally accepted that it was some sort of contamination in essential life-saving drugs that caused one of the worst public health incidents to unfold, it remains unclear who shares the blame. We may never know how the custodians of national security looked over a gaping hole in drug quality control and did nothing about it. Looking back, I consider the society divided into three groups. There are those who have forgotten about it, and there are those who still believe it is ‘bairooni saazish’ (foreign conspiracy) and then there are those who lost everything. We should ask ourselves, which of these three groups deserves our support ?

Fast forward about six months, another piece of news, this time a supposedly positive one, grips the nation. Promoted by federal and provincial cabinets ministers, endorsed by the media and immediately absorbed the people, we are told that a car, that runs on water, has been ‘invented’ by a Pakistani. With water aplenty and petrol scarce, we were told to believe that all tried and tested laws of thermodynamics are worthless when it comes to desi innovation. Get ready, Kelvin, Gibbs, Clausius and other pioneers of thermodynamics, here comes the water car to bamboozle you and all those who contributed to our understanding of how cars work, what engines do and what physics has to say about it. Again, there are three groups.

Those who still believe that this can happen and that elitist groups are stopping Pakistan from changing the world, the group that doesn’t remember anything about the water car and the group that considers it a sorry chapter in our collective intellect.

Apparently, the two stories have nothing to do with each other, but I believe both of them point to a fundamentally similar problem. At the very core, it is the breakdown of quality control. Now, I know that there will always be contamination of medicines, in every country, through complacency, incompetence or malicious intent. The point is to ensure that the system catches it and ensure that if it ever happens once, it never happens again. The real point here is to share with all, why did it happen and whatever happened to safety checks that are supposed to be in place?

The same can be said about contamination of intellect and common sense. Every now and then, we will be duped, but we have to have means to catch it and ensure that it does not proliferate at a national level. Charlatans who promise the moon and some more will always be there. What is unfortunate is that they are promoted as national heroes by the government ministers and the media alike. Again, we should insist on why we allowed this to happen and what have we done to make sure that next time someone claims to convert lead into gold, we don’t allow the government to call him the next national hero.

A quick scan of these, and many other similar events peppered throughout the year, has just one message: a little bit of rigour goes a long way. Insist on a little bit of quality control and we might be able to save ourselves and our intellect from contamination.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4th, 2012.]]>
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			<title>Cloud Cuckooland</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/439946/cloud-cuckooland</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/439946/cloud-cuckooland#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Thu, 20 Sep 12 18:07:54 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[kamran.shafi]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
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			<description>
				<![CDATA[Pakistan has become a Cloud Cuckooland where reason and rational are termed conspiracy, responded through rage.]]>
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				<![CDATA[If this is not Cloud Cuckooland what is it?

As if the car that ran on water and which was touted as a great technological breakthrough, not only by our all-knowing and arrogant TV anchors, but also by our leading bum makers was not enough, the vice chancellor of Pakistan’s best-known university has lent his sagacious voice to the conspiracy theory that the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad on the night between May 1st/2nd was a fraud enacted by the Americans.

Inter alia: ‘Pakistan’s intelligence agencies exhumed the body of Osama Bin Laden and handed it over to the United States (US) in 2006 after conducting DNA test while the recent Abbottabad incident had been fabricated to pressurise and defame Pakistan’. The VC said this while addressing a ‘special seminar organised by PU Academic Staff Association (PUASA) on “9/11 and World War III”’.

So then, everybody and Charlie’s Aunt are wrong: including our ‘intelligence agencies’; the brass hats who are even today attempting to wipe the egg off their faces; Osama’s wives and children who saw him being killed; the Abbottabad Commission which has suddenly got tongue-tied as the extent of the shemozzle becomes apparent; the commentators; the various hospitals where his latest wife was bearing him four children while in hiding in Pakistan including two in the government hospital in Abbottabad, post-2006. How Osama begot these children after he had died in 2006 according to the professor, only he can tell us.

So, everyone is wrong and Professor Mujahid Kamran is right. In which case of course, Dr Shakil Afridi was wrongly apprehended and sentenced actually for working for the Americans in helping trace Bin Laden, but in fact under charges that had nothing to do with Osama’s eventual unearthing; our brass hats were wrong in venting their fury on the Americans for carrying out the raid because they had already handed his body to them in 2006; Hussain Haqqani was wrongly implicated in a case of possible treason: no finding Osama; no red faces in GHQ; no danger of a coup; no Memo to Mike Mullen; no ‘Mammogate’.

Professor Kamran is a serious academic and obviously has information no one else has: I would urge him to let the nation in on what he knows about Osama’s body’s handover to the Americans in 2006 by our ‘intelligence agencies’ and put history right. He will have done a great service to Pakistan and its hurt pride and ‘violated’ sovereignty. All is well that ends well. Thank you Professor.

Staying on message about this being Cloud Cuckooland, we now come to the not-so-curious case of Agha Waqar who belongs to Khairpur in Sindh and became an instant media celebrity on our leading channels, pumped up by support from the senior and junior fathers of our bum, Drs AQ Khan and Samar Mubarakmand. No matter what sense Drs Pervez Hoodbhoy and Attaur Rehman tried to talk, they were drowned out in a cacophony orchestrated by the Ghairat Brigades shouting out loud about how an eminent Pakistani scientist (yes, Master Agha Waqar, none other) was being denied recognition by the cabal of anti-Pakistan countries/agencies: America/Israel/India; CIA/Mossad/RAW, because he had exploded all the myths put forward by Jew and Christian scientists.

Let me quote from Pervez Hoodbhoy’s article “The water car fraud” that appeared on these pages on August 2nd, 2012: “So, what is the problem? It’s that the laws of physics, in particular a fundamental scientific principle known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, impose inviolable constraints. Every machine constructed anywhere uses the Second Law. This is something that I learned in my first year as a student at MIT and have taught for 40 years. No serious scientist would dream of challenging the Second Law. Agha Waqar Ahmad’s ‘water kit’, if one believes science to be right, simply cannot work. What the inventor, the ministers, the anchors and scientists claim on TV is wrong.”

On September 4, 2012, exactly two days after Dr Hoodbhoy’s seminal article, it was reported by an English language daily that Waqar was a crook and a bank robber to boot who was in the Sindh police service since many years but had not ever reported for the various duties he had been deputed for. And that he had been arrested and charged with armed robbery and possession of illegal and unlicensed arms. Curiously, we have heard nothing further about this crook and apparent criminal, his ardent supporters on the TV channels quiet as hibernating dormice.

I suppose flying the banner of the Citadel of Islam whilst proclaiming the crook’s great discovery, they are dumbstruck just as they were when the Americans flew into Abbottabad and took out the most wanted man in the world. It is cruel, I know, but one had the most fun seeing them sputter with impotent rage at those they were used to praising to the skies. Still staying on subject that this is Cloud Cuckooland, why does every third-rate crook and imbecile who dares to blaspheme our Holy Prophet (pbuh) rile us up so much that we set fire to our own country? That Nakoula fellow who, too, is a crook and former jailbird, strung together a disgusting, filthy, scrappy film, and we are killing our own selves? As far as I am concerned it has only made my love for my Prophet (pbuh) that much stronger; but I would not force someone to close down his business to protest as happened in Hyderabad, and then have a case of blasphemy registered against him.

The saddest, most absurd, almost terrifying part is that the police at the highest level say there is no case of blasphemy against the man but that it was nonetheless registered against him because the crowd ‘forced’ the police to do so. Where are we headed friends? Did anyone stop to ask if the man was waiting for a new shipment of perishable goods? Did anyone bother to ask if he was going to soon shutter his shop and go home to tend to his sick mother? Where are we headed, for God’s sake?

We are dead in the water.

Yes we are: more people who wrote comments on the report about Waqar being a crook believed it was all a conspiracy to malign him.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 21st, 2012.]]>
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			<title>Age of reason?</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/439328/age-of-reason</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/439328/age-of-reason#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Thu, 20 Sep 12 03:31:12 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[shahid.mahmood]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
			<guid isPermaLink="false">https://tribune.com.pk/?p=439328</guid>
			<description>
				<![CDATA[While the West lands rovers on Mars, Muslim contributions to science have reduced, losing ground to anti-rationalists.]]>
			</description>
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				<![CDATA[Sir Isaac Newton said, “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people”. There is no disputing physics; it is a science that involves the analysis of matter and its motion through both space and time. Motion is a human propensity, embedded in our genetic code. Humans are always on the move, migrating and evolving, whether pushing the limits of physical prowess or rocketing a probe to Mars. The right to mobility is considered a basic human entitlement, enshrined in the constitutions of many sovereign states. This right asserts that citizens have the liberty to travel, reside and work in a place of their choosing.

On the issue of motion, Usain Bolt is widely recognised as the world’s fastest man. Bolt grew up in Jamaica, a country historically reliant and populated by a legacy of indentured slaves. Slavery was our collective, incalculable madness. Slaves were stripped of the most fundamental of human rights. At the starting blocks of the 100-metre sprint final at the London Olympics, Bolt looked up into the sky and pursed his lips against an extended index finger. It is my assertion that Bolt hushed an Anglophone god, a gesture reminding the host country, that as a Jamaican he has the right to run fast and win. It was an act of supreme confidence shown from a top-flight athlete, symbolically on a par with the human rights salute given by two black athletes at the 1968 Olympics Games in Mexico.

Winning an Olympic gold, like most endeavours, is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. Science, in its many forms, plays an important role in securing success. Bolt does not subscribe to superstitious rituals but rather uses biomedical kinesiology to better understand the phases of his race helping him overcome scoliosis — the abnormal curvature of his lower spine — to help him run faster. And like most elite athletes, Bolt uses a strict regimen of rehydrating drinks to his benefit. The science behind these drinks ensures athletes have adequate energy throughout the day, replenishing their bodily systems and aiding in recovery.

Just as water does not serve the rehydration needs of elite athletes, water is also not a fuel for cars as was recently claimed by a Pakistani scientist, Agha Waqar Ahmad, to have invented a water-fuelled car. Experts in the field ridiculed his assertion as it violated the laws of thermodynamics. Centuries ago, medieval alchemists convinced the world they could transmute base materials into something of value. They failed in their attempts but this did not stop both alchemists and their clergy patrons from fleecing the public. Ahmad’s claim was deceitful and was supported by the minister for religious affairs who righteously stated that the ministry of science and technology will fully support Ahmad’s endeavours.

Our world is quickly moving forward. This past month, Nasa scientists who have been navigating Curiosity rover, the robotic space probe for nine months, landed it on Mars; slavery in the West is relegated to but a sad chapter; while Bolt has now won six gold medals in two successive Olympics. In contrast, Muslim contributions to science have reduced over the years, losing ground to anti-rationalists. Here lies the tragic story of science in many Muslim countries — a dysfunctional relationship between faith and modernity.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20th, 2012.]]>
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			<title>The Laws of Thermostasis</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/418721/the-laws-of-thermostasis</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/418721/the-laws-of-thermostasis#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Tue, 07 Aug 12 17:36:54 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[Ejaz Haider]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Opinion]]></category>
			<guid isPermaLink="false">https://tribune.com.pk/?p=418721</guid>
			<description>
				<![CDATA[How much we know about things, causal paths, purported causal link with water-kit claims, our non-scientific thinking.]]>
			</description>
			<content:encoded>
				<![CDATA[Don’t fret. I have as much interest in writing about cars running on water or Coca Cola as Veena Malik has in wearing anything that is full length. There’s already been a surfeit of articles by physicists, engineers and even satirists weighing in on the matter and declaring that our man from a Sindh polytechnic institute is a fraud.

Instead, there are two related issues that press me to refer to the water car that has seized the imagination of the nation: how much we know about things and causal paths and the purported causal link between the water-kit guy’s claim and our supposed non-scientific thinking, owed, ostensibly, to religion.

In January this year, Jonah Lehrer wrote a piece in Wired magazine, captioned, “Trials and Errors: Why Science is Failing Us”. His story opens on the morning of November 30, 2006 when “executives at Pfizer... held a meeting with investors at the firm’s research centre in Groton, Connecticut. Jeff Kindler, then CEO of Pfizer... was most excited about a new drug called torcetrapib, which had recently entered Phase III clinical trials, the last step before filing for FDA approval. He confidently declared that torcetrapib would be ‘one of the most important compounds of our generation’”.

Lehrer says that “Kindler’s enthusiasm was understandable: The potential market for the drug was enormous. Like Pfizer’s blockbuster medication, Lipitor... torcetrapib was designed to tweak the cholesterol pathway... [and] block a protein that converts HDL cholesterol into its more sinister sibling, LDL. In theory, this would cure our cholesterol problems, creating a surplus of the good stuff and a shortage of the bad. In his presentation, Kindler noted that torcetrapib had the potential to ‘redefine cardiovascular treatment’”.

“There was a vast amount of research behind Kindler’s bold proclamations. The cholesterol pathway is one of the best-understood biological feedback systems in the human body.... Furthermore, torcetrapib had already undergone a small clinical trial, which showed that the drug could increase HDL and decrease LDL. Kindler told his investors that, by the second half of 2007, Pfizer would begin applying for approval from the FDA. The success of the drug seemed like a sure thing.

“And then, just two days later, on December 2, 2006, Pfizer issued a stunning announcement: The torcetrapib Phase III clinical trial was being terminated. Although the compound was supposed to prevent heart disease, it was actually triggering higher rates of chest pain and heart failure and a 60 per cent increase in overall mortality. The drug appeared to be killing people.

“That week, Pfizer’s value plummeted by $21 billion.

“The story of torcetrapib is a tale of mistaken causation. Pfizer was operating on the assumption that raising levels of HDL cholesterol and lowering LDL would lead to a predictable outcome: Improved cardiovascular health. Less arterial plaque. Cleaner pipes. But that didn’t happen....

“[The] assumption — that understanding a system’s constituent parts means we also understand the causes within the system—is not limited to the pharmaceutical industry or even to biology. It defines modern science. In general, we believe that the so-called problem of causation can be cured by more information, by our ceaseless accumulation of facts. Scientists refer to this process as reductionism. By breaking down a process, we can see how everything fits together; the complex mystery is distilled into a list of ingredients. ... Every year, nearly $100 billion is invested in biomedical research in the US, all of it aimed at teasing apart the invisible bits of the body. We assume that these new details will finally reveal the causes of illness, pinning our maladies on small molecules and errant snippets of DNA. Once we find the cause, of course, we can begin working on a cure.” (For the full article see "&gt;here).

Perhaps physics is more accurate in its determination of causal pathways. I don’t know. What I do know remotely, and in no systematic way, is that much in hard sciences has continued to change. Nature has a way of surprising us. But quite apart from this, the interesting aspect of the current controversy is the debate, if it can be called that, among the scientists and the rancour that shines through all of it. If physics — or is this related to chemistry: I’ll be damned if I knew — is as accurate as it is supposed to be, then the fraud should be easy to detect through the established scientific methods. Why the controversy?

The second aspect is even more interesting. If it is accepted that this fraud and the lack of understanding of science it manifests has to do with our irrational thinking begot of our supposed religiosity, then how does one explain a rather long list of scientific misconduct and fraud from China to Germany to Denmark to Great Britain to The Netherlands to Japan to Norway to you-name-it? Google it for yourself.

The question is important since we are on the issue of causality and the laws of thermo- and whatnotdynamics. The assertion that our Sindhi engineer has done what he has because of our national distaste for rationality, which is somehow a result of our collective sense of religiosity, doesn’t come across to me as a particularly impressive scientific method in determining causality especially when it comes with a condescendingly triumphant ‘case-closed’ attitude.

Just like it would be unscientific to challenge the supposedly immutable laws of thermodynamics, it seems to me to be rather unscientific to declare such linear causality to lead to a water-kit when one is dealing with human beings that, unlike the laws of thermodynamics, are not immutable and prone to doing things for reasons that range from the sublime to the ridiculous.

It is fashionable, of course, to do so but since when did the season’s pret-a-porter become the scientific method? Stupidity and fraudulent behaviour remain as much a property of the secular world as they were, and remain, of the religious one.

But then we can move from stressing the scientific method in one area to flouting it in another because that makes good copy and serves politico-ideological agendas. The Laws of Politicodynamics be praised!

Published in The Express Tribune, August 8th, 2012.]]>
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			<title>Agha Waqar accepts Physics teacher's challenge to run car on water</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/418245/mnas-brother-challenges-agha-waqar-to-run-car-on-water</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/418245/mnas-brother-challenges-agha-waqar-to-run-car-on-water#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Mon, 06 Aug 12 10:37:39 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[web.desk]]>
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			<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
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				<![CDATA[Waqar asks PPP MNA's brother Ranomal Malani to distribute prize money worth Rs5 million among the poor.]]>
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				<![CDATA[Professor Ranomal Malani, brother of PPP MNA Dr Mahesh Malani, challenged Engineer Agha Waqar on Monday to run his car on water and get Rs5 million in return. Waqar, accepting the challenge, promised to run all his cars solely on water.

Holding a press conference at the Media Centre in Mathi, Malani handed a cheque worth Rs5 million to the press club administration and said that the cheque will remain with them for 15 more days.

Calling the ‘water car’ a fraud, Malani claimed that Waqar had fooled Federal Minister Khursheed Shah and the media representatives. He added that he was holding the press conference to save the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) from falling victim to a fraud.

Waqar, talking to Express News, asked Malani to tell him his car model and the number of cars, adding that he will prepare the car kits accordingly. “You will permanently run your car on it. It won’t be a test demonstration.”

Waqar added that he does not want to be “bribed” with the prize money and said that Malani should distribute that money among the poor.

Malani, in reply, gave Waqar 10 days to prepare the kits and run his car on water. He also expressed delight over not having to hand the prize money.

“He had hidden a Hydrogen cylinder in his demonstration on TV. He fooled everyone. I know it because I teach Physics. This is impossible,” alleged Malani. But Waqar claimed that he will run the car solely on distilled water and will not add fuel or anything else to it.

Waqar had earlier claimed that he can run a 1,000CC vehicle till 40 kilometres with one litre of water by attaching a small water kit in the car that separates hydrogen from water and supplies it to the engine.

Correction: An earlier version of the article incorrectly quoted Waqar as saying that he wants to be bribed. The error is regretted. ]]>
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			<title>The car that ‘runs’ on water  (II)</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/417563/the-car-that-%e2%80%98runs%e2%80%99-on-water-ii</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/417563/the-car-that-%e2%80%98runs%e2%80%99-on-water-ii#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Sat, 04 Aug 12 17:44:47 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[letter.]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
			<guid isPermaLink="false">https://tribune.com.pk/?p=417563</guid>
			<description>
				<![CDATA[What is even more disturbing is how so many senior scientists seem to have fallen for this hoax.]]>
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				<![CDATA[I made a power point presentation to explain my friends why this so-called ‘water car’ will not work. Many of my friends, all fellow engineers, presented verbal certifications from ‘national heroes’ as argument against the logic I presented and against the laws of thermodynamics. This raises serious questions about the standard of education we have in Pakistan.

What is even more disturbing is how so many senior scientists, including the current head of the PCSIR, seem to have fallen for this hoax and believe what the man is claiming. This, in fact, means that the educational qualifications of these senior scientists, in positions of authority, are themselves questionable.

Muhammad Ali Shami

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5th, 2012.]]>
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			<title>Turning water into wine</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/417599/turning-water-into-wine</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/417599/turning-water-into-wine#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Sat, 04 Aug 12 17:23:19 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[saroop.ijaz]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
			<guid isPermaLink="false">https://tribune.com.pk/?p=417599</guid>
			<description>
				<![CDATA[In Pakistan, everything is a matter of belief, not only religion but politics and now science.]]>
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				<![CDATA[On waking up to a day where the two major stories were the death of Gore Vidal and the earth-shattering invention (perhaps, more accurately, discovery) of the water kit proposing to solve the global energy crisis, it is inevitable to speculate a bit on what Gore Vidal might have said on the pseudo engineering enterprise. Never has the transformation of water been so fascinating since Jesus of Nazareth executed the most titillating and my personal favorite miracle of turning water into wine to ensure that the festivities continue unhindered at a wedding at Cana. Had Agha Waqar devoted his apparently boundless talents to emulating the Biblical miracle, he would have earned my eternal gratitude and I am sure of many others. Vidal, commenting on Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War, said, “This is not bad at all, except as prose”. So, as interesting as this water kit business is, it does seem to be some stretch to call this science. I cannot possibly improve upon the brilliant Doctor Pervez Hoodbhoy’s dissection of this quackery and how this is not science. Yet, it is not only the egregious assault on the laws of physics which is depressing but also our willingness to believe anything and at times everything.

While having to sit through the toe-curling embarrassment of the revolutionary inventor on primetime on almost all television channels, it was natural to wonder how difficult is it to do some basic background research for the television anchors, at the very least make “Google” useful. Especially for these warriors of the free media who will bring forth the most intimate of secrets of our politicians. Had they done a Google search they would have found out that Mr Waqar is not the first ‘scientist’ to stumble upon this, various ‘inventors’ all over the globe have discovered this as their ‘eureka’ moment and are now making a living of trying to sell these things on the internet. Some of this can be attributed to laziness; however, I think there is something more to it. One got a faint feeling that they were willing to give Mr Waqar a chance of continuing his claptrap for the reason that they wanted, for a change, to bring to light something positive, a ray of hope in these times of hopelessness etc. To ask him to bring scientific proofs of his ‘theory’ seemed unpatriotic to them, and what are a few laws of Physics compared with the love for the nation. I am sure driven by noble motives, yet displaying little regard for the basic methodology of science.

Coming back to Gore Vidal, he was at his best when he wrote: “We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.” In our case, we remember very little. Mr Waqar got more publicity in these few days than Dr Abdus Salam could manage to get in his entire life. The recent discovery of the Higgs boson particle and the role of Dr Salam in developing the theoretical framework did not manage to sufficiently excite very many anchors to allocate precious airtime. The first scientist to endorse the water kit was the greatly overrated and over-praised Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. Here again, amnesia is relevant, not too long ago, this man came on national television to confess that he had facilitated nuclear proliferation. In a slightly more civilised country, this man would have been staring at a life sentence and not making foolish public statements. Yet, here all he needs to do is remind us that he is the “father of the bomb” and some gibberish about deterrence, India, West and Islam and is back to being a national icon.

One can understand the reasons that gave Mr Waqar the audacity to conduct this exhibition at the national stage. We have a history of treating nonsense with deference. Dr Samar Mubarakmand has made a habit of articulating that all of Pakistan’s problems can be solved by Thar coal and getting understanding, even awe-struck nods, instead of questions in return. When people are idiotic or malicious enough to pronounce after every earthquake and floods that it is our immorality that has been the cause of the natural disaster, they are not treated with the contempt that they deserve. Then there is the game of spotting the moon, every Eid and Ramazan, by octogenarians with advanced myopia. One Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission scientist published a paper proposing that the energy crisis can be solved if the Djinns are tapped as a source of potential energy, because they as you know are made of fire (the said scientist was subsequently arrested for having links with the Taliban, although I feel the writing of the said paper was enough of a reason to at least lock him up in an asylum). JG Ballard could not have made this stuff up in his most creative science fiction work. Zakir Naik and Harun Yahya take indecent liberties with science (particularly evolution and natural selection) and still manage to maintain a satisfactory sale of DVDs and books. The only attention Zaid Hamid deserves for his views on weather engineering, HAARP etc is medical attention.

In Pakistan, everything is a matter of belief, not only religion but politics and now science. You do not agree with someone’s politics, you believe in them. The ambit of the powers of the Supreme Court should not be analysed; you are supposed to believe in the Court. Don’t ask how corruption and terrorism will be eradicated in 90 (or equally arbitrary 19) days, just have faith. Conventional science is not particularly susceptible to this model of belief and would be considered ‘un-Islamic’. Mr Waqar has benefited from our television anchors, government personnel and luminaries from science who are desperate to have something new to believe, and have now found a quaint simplistic easy-to-believe ‘theory’. It is also somewhat befitting that one of the earliest endorsements of the water car project came from the Minister for Religious Affairs. We are closer to beginning alchemy and astrology classes in schools than we are to teaching evolutionary biology.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5th, 2012.]]>
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			<title>Water world: Dr Attaur Rehman senses a scam behind man touting water kit</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/417246/water-world-dr-attaur-rehman-senses-a-scam-behind-man-touting-water-kit</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/417246/water-world-dr-attaur-rehman-senses-a-scam-behind-man-touting-water-kit#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Fri, 03 Aug 12 23:31:53 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[noman.ahmed]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category><category><![CDATA[Sindh]]></category>
			<guid isPermaLink="false">https://tribune.com.pk/?p=417246</guid>
			<description>
				<![CDATA[The kit was to be tested on Thursday at NUST, but this did not happen.]]>
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				<![CDATA[Sindh Senior Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ayaz Soomro is the latest to jump on the infamous ‘water kit’ bandwagon, having called the man touting the ‘invention’ a national hero.

“Agha Waqar’s invention of a water kit has proved and recognised Sindhi people on world level,” Soomro told journalists at his office. “He is our national hero.”

Eminent physicist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy and former Higher Education Commission head Dr Attaur Rehman have criticised Agha Waqar, who claims to have invented the water kit that can power a car, for making a mockery of science. However, Soomro called Dr Attaur Rehman, a “production of dictatorship” while categorically rejecting the latter’s scepticism at Waqar’s claims.

Dr Atta refused to respond to the provincial law minister’s statement. He said that it should be enough to evaluate the veracity of the allegation that he was never affiliated with any political party but received civil awards for his services from almost all political leaders, including Benazir Bhutto.

Meanwhile, the question of proper technical examination of the water kit was only brought up in a meeting held at the President House on Wednesday. The meeting, which was presided over by the principal secretary to the president Salman Farooqui, concluded that the car with a water-kit installed will be sent to the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Islamabad. The officials were supposed to send the car to the university on Thursday morning but this did not happen.

When Waqar was asked by The Express Tribune why he did not show up at NUST on Thursday, he said that the plan had changed. “The technical examination has now been deferred for an unidentified period of time and will not happen soon,” he said. When inquired to explain the reason for the deferral, Waqar simply hung up the phone.

Debunking the water kit

“The car has not been subjected to scientific examination and yet the issue has been blown out of proportion by irresponsible media coverage and praises showered by ministers,” Dr Rehman told The Express Tribune. He added that he was and is calling for scientific examination of the claim and did not know if he has been served a legal notice for this just demand.

“Had he been genuine and not leading ministers around him with his bizarre claims, he would have filed an international patent to protect his invention and only then he would come out with the claim.” He also believes that there is a massive scam behind the claim to mint money from government and corporate sources.

Waqar has become a household name after he appeared on several primetime talk show hosts to showcase the water kit, which he claims can power vehicles.

Dr Rehman rubbished Waqar’s claim that a 1,000CC vehicle will get 40 kilometres per litre of water, and said these statements could only be made in Pakistan. “In countries where scientific research is taken seriously, nobody would pretend to joke about science in this manner.”

Dr Rehman said that the “self-proclaimed inventor” did not have knowledge about basic processes like electrolysis.

“This is the first mistake he is making and he does not even know that you can’t even get electrolysis on distilled water,” he said, “For this purpose you have to have an electrolyte [a solution that conducts electricity] which can be decomposed by electrolysis.”

He explained that a powerful energy source, which could only be a battery in this case, is required to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen and then recombine them through combustion to release energy. “But firstly, the energy which is required to separate hydrogen and oxygen will always be greater in amount than the energy released and secondly, the external energy source will eventually die out to fail the process since the efficiency of electrolysis in hardly 20 to 30%.”

He added that if this were not the case than this man has invented a “perpetual motion machine” which again, according to a scientific consensus, is impossible. “What this man is proposing is scientifically impossible; he is defying the first law of thermodynamics,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4th, 2012.]]>
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			<title>Violating the laws of physics on national television</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/417096/violating-the-laws-of-physics-on-national-television</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/417096/violating-the-laws-of-physics-on-national-television#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Fri, 03 Aug 12 16:43:51 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[amer.iqbal]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
			<guid isPermaLink="false">https://tribune.com.pk/?p=417096</guid>
			<description>
				<![CDATA[The basic idea behind the Khairpur device is not new and has been shown not to work.]]>
			</description>
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				<![CDATA[Just a few weeks ago, the discovery of a new particle was celebrated by physicists the world over. The properties of this new particle are being studied and many expect it to be the Higgs boson predicted by the Salam-Weinberg Electroweak theory. If confirmed as the Higgs Boson, it provides for the completion of the standard model of particle physics. The standard model is the culmination of 100 years of particle physics, which began with the discovery of the electron in 1897. This theory predicts with extreme precision — in some cases one part in 100 billion — the properties and interactions of all the fundamental particles and is one of the two foundation stones of modern theoretical physics, the other being Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Once again, our understanding of the basic laws of physics was confirmed by the discovery at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an experiment 10 years in the making.

The basic principles on which entire physics rests, include the laws of thermodynamics and the law of conservation of energy. The discovery of new particles in accelerators, such as the LHC, rests on the premise that the conservation laws of energy and momentum hold and this has been confirmed to extreme precision.

Thus, it would be utterly impossible to see a violation of this law in everyday events or even at an atomic scale. However, this is exactly what is being claimed by an engineer from Khairpur, Agha Waqar Ahmad. For the last few weeks, he has appeared in many TV programmes on national channels claiming to have developed a device, which allows a car to run on water. Apparently the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR) has confirmed his claims as indicated by the statements of the PCSIR Chairman, Dr Shaukat Pervaiz, in the programme “Capital Talk” (July 31).

The basic idea behind the Khairpur device is not new and has been shown not to work. Here is what Agha Waqar is proposing: electrical energy, from the battery, electrolyses water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen; the hydrogen is then burned in the engine thus recombining with oxygen to produce water, while producing heat and mechanical energy to run the car. Part of this mechanical energy is used to run the alternator to charge the battery. To put it simply, the battery runs the car and charges itself. This is absurd and impossible!

The absurdity of the Khairpur device can be understood by drawing an analogy with another similar mechanism. Consider the following argument. Electricity can be used to run a car and electricity can be produced by using a wind turbine. Given these two facts does it make sense to install a wind turbine on the roof of an electric car? The flow of air due to car cruising at some speed rotates the turbine and turbine provides electricity, which allows the car to keep on cruising. Or how about an electric pump, which pumps water into a reservoir at a certain height so that when water flows down from the reservoir, it rotates a turbine, which generates electricity for the pump? What is being proposed by Agha Waqar is as absurd as the contraptions mentioned in the above thought experiments. Such hypothetical devices are known as perpetual motion machines and their existence violates basic laws of physics.

Scientific frauds are not rare and several have been able to carry on for a long time because of their sophisticated nature, but the way an ordinary engineer has been able to do it on national TV for several weeks, with scientific institutions such as the PCSIR backing him, is mindboggling. If nothing else, it demonstrates the incompetence of people running these institutions. The PCSIR chairman appeared in two different programmes (“Kyun” and “Capital Talk”) and it was clear from his statements on both programmes that he had no clue what the underlying issue with the Khairpur device is, his only “research” on the topic being the a printout about hydrogen fuel cells from the website http://www.howstuffworks.com. I hope when in coming days this claim is found to be fraudulent, the PCSIR chairman will have the decency to resign from his post. It was sad to see Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan and Dr Samar Mubarakmand display their lack of understanding of basic physics and history of scientific development on national TV channels. However, Dr Attaur Rehman’s comments and his attempt to teach Agha Waqar Ahmad some basic physics were admirable.

Groundbreaking claims require a high level of proof. It is not clear why the producers of “Capital Talk” did not ask a team of scientists, well-versed in the area, to test the claims before presenting it to the world. Contrary to the claims of minister for religious affais, Khursheed Shah (“Capital Talk”, July 30), no LUMS faculty member has seen or approved the Khairpur device as far as I know. It is not surprising that ‘water as fuel’ claims appear every few weeks on national TV since such fraudulent claims are not properly vetted and the potential payoff is huge.

Experiments sometime do contradict prevailing theoretical models. One famous example of this is the experiment determining the energy emitted, at a certain wavelength, by a black body. A black body is an object that absorbs all light that falls on it and hence appears black; it is also a perfect emitter. The results of this experiment were not in agreement with theoretical understanding of the black body radiation at that time. The reconciliation of observation and theory marked the beginning of quantum theory. However, what needs to be understood is that the new theory encompasses the old one and extends it. It is not usually the case that the old theory turns out to be completely wrong. For example, Newton’s theory of universal gravitation works very well if we would like to calculate the trajectory of, say, a cricket ball. But we know that Newton’s theory is not correct, the correct theory being Einstein’s general theory of relativity. We can still use Newton’s theory since the deviations from it are extremely tiny and become significant only when the gravity is strong such as near a black hole or when we want extreme precision such as for global positioning system.

The utter lack of scepticism regarding such claims is sad not only because it shows poor understanding of basic science by people apparently running ‘scientific’ institutions and those, who have been eulogised by folklore in this country for ‘their achievements’, but also shows how desperate we are to believe that Pakistanis can also do something extraordinary. The desperation to believe in ourselves as a nation possibly stems from an utter failure in sciences, while scientific and technological progress by others keeps on gathering pace and the gulf grows ever wider, likely to be unbridgeable by now.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4th, 2012.]]>
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			<title>The water car fraud</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/417110/the-water-car-fraud-2</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/417110/the-water-car-fraud-2#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Fri, 03 Aug 12 15:40:54 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[letter.]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
			<guid isPermaLink="false">https://tribune.com.pk/?p=417110</guid>
			<description>
				<![CDATA[To me, questioning the second law of thermodynamics is akin to blasphemy (metaphorically).]]>
			</description>
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				<![CDATA[This is with reference to Pervez Hoodbhoy’s article “The water car fraud” (August 3). Being a student of science, I was appalled at the response that Agha Waqar Ahmad has been given by media persons. To me, questioning the second law of thermodynamics is akin to blasphemy (metaphorically). I am happy that among my downtrodden, ill-educated people, there are people like Dr Hoodbhoy and Dr Attaur Rahman, who give me hope.
On the other hand, I am deeply saddened by the comments made by Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan and Dr Samar Mubarakmand. What prompted them to endorse this so-called invention, considering they are people of recognised eminence, is beyond me. I wish Dr Hoodbhoy luck in his effort to bring sanity to the country.
Ali Iqbal
Published in The Express Tribune, August 4th, 2012.]]>
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			<title>The water car fraud</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/416542/the-water-car-fraud</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/416542/the-water-car-fraud#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Thu, 02 Aug 12 16:38:17 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[pervez.hoodbhoy]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
			<guid isPermaLink="false">https://tribune.com.pk/?p=416542</guid>
			<description>
				<![CDATA[Agha Waqar Ahmad’s ‘water kit’, if one believes science to be right, simply cannot work.]]>
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				<![CDATA[Agha Waqar Ahmad deserves a medal from the people of Pakistan for his great service to the nation. In a few short days, he has exposed just how far Pakistan has fallen into the pit of ignorance and self-delusion. No practical joker could have demonstrated more dramatically the true nature of our country’s political leaders, popular TV anchors and famed scientists.

At first, it sounded like a joke: a self-styled engineer, trained in Khairpur’s polytechnic institute, claims to have invented a ‘water kit’ enabling any car to run on water alone. It didn’t matter that the rest of world couldn’t extract energy from water; he had done it. He promised a new Pakistan with limitless energy, no need for petrol or gas, and no more loadshedding. For an energy starved nation, it is a vision of paradise.

Agha Waqar Ahmad is now a national celebrity thanks to Religious Affairs Minister Khursheed Shah. Federal ministers Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani and Qamar Zaman Kaira have added their commendations. President Asif Ali Zardari has expressed his delight. The cabinet has met three times to discuss the water vehicle, and a fourth meeting is scheduled. Reports suggest millions may be spent on the ‘water fuel kit project’.

The media has rushed in to celebrate the new national hero. For TV anchor Talat Husain, thanks to Agha Waqar Ahmad’s invention, Pakistan’s image can go from a country ravaged by terrorism to one of boundless possibilities. Anchor Hamid Mir and Senator Parvaiz Rasheed drove around Islamabad sitting next to the inventor, wondering how to protect the man’s life from Western oil companies. Anchor Arshad Sharif was euphoric about the $14 billion Pakistan would save on oil imports.

Pakistan’s most celebrated scientists were not far behind. Asked by Anchor Sharif whether a car could run only on water, nuclear hero Dr Samar Mubarakmand replied without hesitation: “jee haan, bilkul ho sakta hai” (yes, absolutely possible). For his part, Hamid Mir asked Dr AQ Khan if there was any chance of this being a fraud. The response was clear: “Main nay apnay level per investigate kiya hai aur koi fraud waraud nahi kiya hai” (I have investigated the matter and there is no fraud involved). The head of the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Dr Shaukat Parvaiz, went further: “hum nay bhi iss pay kam karaya tha” (we had some work done on this too).

So, what is the problem? It’s that the laws of physics, in particular a fundamental scientific principle known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, impose inviolable constraints. Every machine constructed anywhere uses the Second Law. This is something that I learned in my first year as a student at MIT and have taught for 40 years. No serious scientist would dream of challenging the Second Law. Agha Waqar Ahmad’s ‘water kit’, if one believes science to be right, simply cannot work. What the inventor, the ministers, the anchors and scientists claim on TV is wrong.

To his credit, the only person on TV that seemed to know this elementary principle was Dr Attaur Rahman, a chemist and a former HEC chairman. I have not agreed with all his actions and views in the past, but he alone rejected the claims about the new machine. Sadly, he was not able to hold back the tide of a nation desperate for any answer to its energy woes.

The water fraud will be exposed soon enough and, like a bad posterior smell, will go away. A simple experiment will make this happen faster. Here’s how: take an emergency electricity generator, of which there are thousands in Islamabad. Its engine is similar to that in a car. Remove the fuel tank and make sure the ‘water kit’ contains only water. Then ask the inventor to connect it up and run the generator. Let there be enough sharp-eyed witnesses of intelligence and integrity.

But this episode raises bigger questions. Scientific frauds exist in other countries, but what explains their spectacular success in Pakistan? Answer: our leaders are lost in the dark, fumbling desperately for a miracle; our media is chasing spectacle, not truth; and our great scientists care more about being important than about evidence. It is easy for them all to get away with this. As a nation, we have proven unwilling to do the hard work needed to learn to reason, to be sceptical, to demand proof, to understand even basic science. It is easier to believe the world is run by magic and conspiracies, to wish and wait for Aladin’s magic lamp. We live in the age of jahilliya.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 3rd, 2012.

______________________________________________

[poll id="836"]]]>
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			<title>Mother of all solutions</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/416543/mother-of-all-solutions</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/416543/mother-of-all-solutions#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Thu, 02 Aug 12 16:20:32 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[letter.]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
			<guid isPermaLink="false">https://tribune.com.pk/?p=416543</guid>
			<description>
				<![CDATA[Forget power cuts, just put two litres of water in the generator and sleep soundly throughout the night.]]>
			</description>
			<content:encoded>
				<![CDATA[A Pakistani engineer, Agha Waqar Ahmad, has claimed that he has invented a water kit that enables vehicles to run on water. Following this ‘invention’, railway locomotives will no longer need any diesel; just fill the fuel tank with distilled water and off you go to Karachi. Flying on water, PIA will come out of the red and will soon regain its clientele. Forget power cuts, just put two litres of water in the generator and sleep soundly throughout the night.
The implications of the so-called invention are mindboggling indeed. To start with, all physics textbooks will need to be revised. Entire chapters on thermodynamics may have to be deleted. With cheap energy available domestically, who will need to import oil from the Middle East? Export of water kit fitted cars to other countries will earn billions of dollars for the country. Our finance minister will then become a strong candidate for the post of the next director general of the IMF. And, of course, the Nobel Prize for physics for the great inventor.
Only time will tell whether Agha Ahmad is a conman or a great scientist, but he has certainly proved himself to be a great media manager. Well-known TV anchors are badgering the government to provide a few millions to him to set up a water kit plant. What is odd is that the only specimen so far on display is the one fitted in his own car. His reluctance to patent his invention indicates lack of confidence in his own kit. He should remember that the moment he produces a satisfied customer, he will no longer need to run after sponsors. The sponsors will run after him. Pakistanis must remember that we have among us several fake scientists, who keep appearing on the media from time to time. One of them even claimed that he could disprove Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Dr Faiz Ahmad
Published in The Express Tribune, August 3rd, 2012.]]>
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			<title>‘Water car’: Engineer sues doctor for ‘trying to undermine’ his invention</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/416263/%e2%80%98water-car%e2%80%99-engineer-sues-doctor-for-%e2%80%98trying-to-undermine%e2%80%99-his-invention</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/416263/%e2%80%98water-car%e2%80%99-engineer-sues-doctor-for-%e2%80%98trying-to-undermine%e2%80%99-his-invention#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Thu, 02 Aug 12 01:56:52 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[peer.muhammad]]>
			</dc:creator>
			<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
			<guid isPermaLink="false">https://tribune.com.pk/?p=416263</guid>
			<description>
				<![CDATA[&quot; I challenge Dr Atta to physically examine the car as water is its sole source of fuel,&quot; says Agha Waqar.]]>
			</description>
			<content:encoded>
				<![CDATA[A self-proclaimed inventor of a water kit capable of powering a car is suing a former science and technology minister for undermining his work. 


Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Agha Waqar said that Dr Attaur Rehman is baselessly trying to undermine his research, which is why he sent the legal notice. Dr Rehman had rejected the viability of the water kit based on the scientific law of conservation.

Waqar said Dr Rehman has rejected the experiment without personally examining it. “I challenge Dr Atta to physically examine the car as water is its sole source of fuel,” Waqar said. He added that the water kit is a small device attached in the car that separates hydrogen from water and supplies it to the engine.

He claimed that a 1,000CC vehicle will get 40 kilometres per litre of water while a one-KV generator could produce electricity for two hours on a litre of water.

The engineer said the water fuelling system was a “simple technology” in which hydrogen bonding with distilled water produces hydrogen gas to run a car engine.

Pakistan Science Foundation Chairman Dr Manzoor Hussain Soomro, accompanying Waqar, said, “This is an extraordinary breakthrough and we should examine it carefully as the system may have national and international importance.”

However, he said that thorough testing is needed to validate the invention. Many important inventions through time have been made by non-scientists and the team’s work should not be arbitrarily ruled out, he added.

Earlier, a cabinet sub-committee praised the invention and assured the engineer of full support, with the invention due to be presented for approval in the next cabinet meeting.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 2nd, 2012. ]]>
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			<title>A car that runs  on water?</title>
			<link>https://tribune.com.pk/story/416014/a-car-that-runs-on-water</link>
			<comments>https://tribune.com.pk/story/416014/a-car-that-runs-on-water#comments</comments>
			<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 12 19:57:30 +0500</pubDate>
			<dc:creator>
				<![CDATA[editorial]]>
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				<![CDATA[By being gullible enough to believe we can use water as a fuel, we are doing our best to live up to the caricature.]]>
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				<![CDATA[In recent days, talk show hosts who really should know better have been touting a peculiar invention known as the water kit. An engineer has claimed to have found a way to use water as a fuel that can run cars. He claims to have done this by splitting the oxygen and hydrogen molecules in water, a feat which, if real, would represent one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of science. However, we must not forget that water is not a fuel and the fact that the matter is being debated and hyped up without proper scientific investigation, displays our profound scientific illiteracy and the media’s irresponsible response to this claim.

Belief in the ability to run vehicles on water seems to now have become a matter of national pride. Nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, whose hyper patriotism seems to have swallowed the scientific nous he possesses, has treated the ‘discovery’ as if it was real without examining it scientifically. The cabinet, perhaps, in a burst of excitement at the prospect of our energy woes being solved, wants a demonstration of the water kit. A lone scientist or two have been trying to inject sanity into the debate but have been shouted down by others who see a genuine scientific breakthrough where none may exist. We have often been accused by our detractors as a people ruled by emotion rather than reason. By being gullible enough to believe that we can use water as a fuel, we are doing our best to live up to the caricature.

The problem here is that we are so insecure about our achievements on the world stage that when one of our own claims to have done something incredible, our first instinct is to believe him, defend him against all criticism and see the person as improving the image of the country. Naysayers are instantly denounced as self-loathing individuals. Meanwhile, those who have genuinely advanced scientific knowledge in their fields, like Dr Abdus Salam, are forgotten simply because of their religious beliefs. It is sad that when the Higgs boson particle was recently discovered, none of our media pundits conducted the kind of extensive talk shows on Dr Salam’s contribution to this great discovery, like the ones they have devoted to the ‘invention’ of the water kit.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 2nd, 2012.

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